Amazon Sales Reached 426 Per Second During Holidays

A large portion of holiday shopping made its way online and away from brick and mortar stores for this holiday season and the effect of that change was seen in at least a few ways. Earlier this week it was reported that UPS and Fedex were simply unable to deliver packages on time due to the increase in online orders, and a recent announcement from Amazon may have something to do with that.

The online retailer confirmed that it had broken past its previous holiday sales record and in doing so, reached a rate of 426 sales per second during at least one part of the holiday season.

The entire 2013 holiday season was the best ever for Amazon, with more than 36.8 million items ordered worldwide on Cyber Monday, which is a record-breaking 426 items per second, and millions of customers unwrapped Kindle e-readers and Kindle Fire tablets this holiday season. – Amazon

This announcement came alongside Amazon’s statement that it had also sold 1 million Amazon Prime memberships before Christmas. Not only did this allow the retailer to meet many of its goals for the season but it also confirmed that Amazon is simply taking over the retail world as more and more people find that shopping online is either cheaper or more convenient than driving to a traditional store.

Amazon Prime membership continues to grow, and we now have tens of millions of members worldwide. They benefit from all-you-can-eat free two-day shipping on millions of eligible items and our members have a voracious appetite. We are extremely grateful to our customers around the world and wish everyone the very best for the coming year. – Jeff Bezos, Amazon CEO

Of course, there are some logistical issues with the increase in online sales (as we saw with UPS and Fedex earlier this week) but as the online sector becomes more profitable, everyone involved will have an incentive to build up their services, making the online shopping process even faster and simpler than it already is and Amazon appears to be spearheading that initiative.

The 426 sales per second achievement only stuck around for a short time and was not sustained for multiple days but considering the millions of sales that Amazon sees on any given day, it is possible that 400 sales per second will become quite common in the near future.